Touching Skin, Sharp
by officersun524
Summary: This is a companion piece for The Choice, written as part of The Companion Chronicles series. On Valldon, Aeryn realizes her fate.


Disclaimer: All characters are property of the Jim Henson Company

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Companion Chronicles for _The Choice_. Spoilers for that episode if you haven't seen it.

Thanks to KNS for letting me write this fic for one of my favorite episodes. Also, thanks to her for beta and finding yet another poem for me.

The night has a thousand eyes  
And the day but one;  
Yet the light of the bright world dies  
With the dying sun.  
The mind has a thousand eyes  
And the heart but one;  
And the light of the whole life dies  
When love is done.  
\- Francis Bourdillon-

* * *

You forget that you've seen her face before: Those intense blue gray eyes staring into your own, waiting for some kind of satisfaction. The rifle is firm in your grip, the way you've held it most of your life. She stands on the window ledge, the muzzle aimed at her back, and the imposter nothing but dead flesh lying at your feet.

Your leg throbs where you'd cut through it with the same knife you'd used to stab that bloody-eyed fekkik who'd tried to sell you out. It's a Peacekeeper issue knife, serrated so that it leaves a fleshy mess of your enemy. You didn't realize that first time you'd sheathed it in your boot that you would have to use it to separate your leg from the rest of your body, the hilt slick with your own sweat and blood.

This woman standing in front of you mocks you from her position on the narrow window ledge- her back to you, nothing to lose. Even without seeing her face, you're sure she's smirking at you. _"Do it, then"_ her bearing tells you, and you're ready.

She mocks you, she mocks the Peacekeepers, she mocks her breeding. A pilot, you were meant to be a pilot, not the murderous creature you've become. She was bred to be a pilot too, not this passive, unarmed woman who stands there, waiting to be killed, her pistol laid aside on a table, the strap of her holster wrapped around it.

You fire two shots, one to either side of her, but she barely flinches.

Her voice breaks through your reverie. You wish she'd shut up.

"Why don't you come out here, a bit closer? It might make it easier for you." The words land in your ears like a boot sinking into the sand, soft, pulling you down. The last time you heard words spoken like that was from Talyn-_We can leave, Xhalax, take our child to a Sebacean settlement. I have rank, I can find a reason…_

You join her on the ledge. She turns to face you, resignation in her expression. Are those eyes her father's? You can't remember what his eyes were like. You used to know, used to recall the feel of his angular face under your fingertips, his lips on yours, and his words promising a life you could never see.

But…you do remember his eyes, pleading with you in the lower chambers of a command carrier court, the adjudicator of justice waiting while the child slept tiers above you among countless, faceless others.

_I did that…for love…_

"Here. You can't miss from here," she says. "…Unless you want to."

The muzzle is just under her chin. If you shoot her in the throat, she'll stop talking, she'll fall backwards, out of your sight. Her eyes might close right away and you won't have to see the stare that invites you to return to her.

"Drop the gun, Xhalax." A request, not an order.

The rifle quivers as your grip weakens and you begin to move the rifle from her. Her eyes hold you like a cable that connects you to her.

Your daughter stands before you, tattered clothing, hair blowing away from her face, nothing of the Peacekeeper in her, and you realize that you are the same to her-tattered, broken, nothing of the Peacekeeper left in you.

_We do nothing for love_, she'd said, _not one thing …_ but she was wrong. She stands between you and oblivion metras below on a narrow ledge that barely holds the both of you, as she waits for you to make your next choice.

In a blast of pistol fire, it's made for you. The fire seeps into your body, piercing the paraphoral nerve, hitting you in the heart. She grabs hold of you and brings your body to hers as if in doing so, she can keep your life force inside you.

"Let me fall, Aeryn." You see it now, see what she has become, unarmed, undisciplined-what she has finally made of you in two short meetings. The values you have both sworn to uphold-loyalty, sacrifice, honor-are subjugated to the arms she has clasped around you, her heart beating against yours.

"No."

"Do it. Let me go. I died a long time ago." The fire increases in your head, in your hands, in the part of your leg that you'd saved. "You live for me."

Her forehead presses against yours, cool against the heat rising in your body; when she releases you, you fall, fall, fall, the memory of those eyes the last thing you see.

* * *

"Aeryn…" Crais' voice is hoarse. His arm is limp at his side, the pistol pointing at the floor. "She was going to shoot..."

Aeryn glances at him as she steps down from the ledge then her eyes sweep toward her own pulse pistol.

Pulse fire has brought her back to sobriety. She sits on the hard slab that passed for a bed and takes off her boots then stands again. She hears the door close as she pulls the dress over her head. Her own clothes are in a pile on the floor. Lights stream across her naked body as she walks across the room to her clothing.

Leathers slide over her legs, socks over her feet, boots over that, each strap firmly in place, finally the shirt that she zips just over her breasts. She is encased in clothing again, a shell sharp against her skin.

Her fingers work at her hair like it's not her own. Precise, automatic movements, one strand over another until her hair pulls against the nape of her neck.

The belt goes on last, holster empty.

She stands at attention, face to the mirror. The hard edges have returned, everything as it should be.

Except for him.

John Crichton stands across the room from her, looking out a window, reflected in the mirror.

"Maybe…I could have become something different. If you'd lived, I could have truly changed. But you are gone."

And I am empty.

"And I am…" She reaches for the pulse pistol on the table beside her. It's heavy in her hand. Substantial. She slides it home with a click. "…What I was bred to be."

"Aeryn…"

His voice floats to her, full of wonder. She turns from the face in the mirror to the specter by the window.

"Come here…"

"No. You have to go now."

_I have to go now. _ She can't completely escape him, turned half toward him, half toward her double in the mirror. But when she looks back, he's gone.

The seer sits in its container. She glances at her reflection once more. Turns away.

The creature speaks out. "Wait."

She stops, doesn't turn toward it or the window. She's as boxed-in as the seer.

"Most of the time, Aeryn, what we do is a distortion- a hoax. But, with you, Aeryn Sun, it may... have been... real. Shall we try? One... more... time?"

One. More. Time.

Real.

No.

_We do nothing for love._

Her hand rests on the butt of her gun, shoulders squared, chin up. Eyes locked on the door in front of her, past the bed, past the clothing and the empty raslak bottles, and the body still lying on the floor.

She concentrates on breathing, on feet moving towards the door, through corridors, down stairs, past bodies alive and dead. On the gunship just beyond.

Objectives.

Everything as it should be.

END


End file.
